The Great Chain

Monday, December 6, 2010

Yahweh's Insatiable Bloodlust - NSFW

For all of Yahweh's alleged interest in kindness and love and peace, if one actually takes the time to read the Bible it is clear that there is one thing above all that really gets Yahweh's motor running - ritual slaughter. Reading the Old Testament, it is readily apparent that Yahweh LOVES watching humans dismember, disembowel and decapitate helpless animals. Smelling them smear the blood all over themselves, various altars and other animals. Yahweh spends literally hundreds of verses describing EXACTLY how to engage in ritual slaughter. How to slaughter, flay, and splash, splatter and smear the blood of bulls. Lev 1:3-9. How and where to kill goats and sheep and how to decorate god's alter with its blood and entrails. Lev 1:10-13. How to tear the heads off of doves and dribble their blood all over the alter and burn the whole lot. Lev 14-17. How to separate the fat, liver and kidneys as a sign of fellowship. Lev 3:1-16. How ONLY God is allowed to eat the fat and blood. Lev 3:17. How you are to dip your fingers in the blood, sprinkle it seven times and smear it all over the horns and alter and then pour the rest of the blood out at the base of God's altar. Lev. 4:1-12.

The Bible describes Yahweh's lust for blood in excruciating detail. Indeed, Yahweh spends more time describing the exact process to be utilized for ritualistic slaughter than he spends on almost any other subject in the whole Bible - far more than he spends discussing peace or love or compassion. Indeed, what did Yahhweh demand when the Tabernacle was completed? The ritual slaughter of 240 animals. Nice guy.

When I was a child, I was watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with my parents. They fast forwarded through the scene where they were eating snakes and monkey brains. They fast forwarded through the part with the sacrifices to Molo'ram. They fast forwarded through a lot of that movie, now that I think about it. Little did I know at the time that such a scene would have been "an aroma pleasing to the Lord" had it been done at Yahweh's temple. That indeed the altar, the steps, the entire courtyard would have run red with blood.

It is impossible to imagine the horror and stench of such a scene. Ancient humans, dressed in finery, soaked in the blood of animals, waving and sprinkling blood all over floors and walls from decapitated heads and limbs in some despicable ritualistic slaughter. Christians often use such imagery to belittle the ancient Greeks, Romans, Aztecs and Mayans, conveniently avoiding the fact that their own sacred scriptures demands equally bloody and pointless ritual.

It is utterly unsurprising that the grisly truth of early Christianity is never discussed in Sunday School and never referred to in anything but the most oblique and sanitary ways. Because such rituals are primitive. Disgusting. Bloodthirsty. Depraved. Wrong.

And yet it is THESE bloody slaughters that Yahweh delights in. These bloody slaughters that Yahweh demands in celebration. And woe to the unfortunate whose bloody slaughter is somehow insufficient - for that man will face Yahweh's unbridled wrath.

What kind of being would require such pointless killing? What kind of being would demand such cruelty? Yahweh's bloodlust - indeed, the insatiable bloodlust of all of the Gods of the ancient world is truly depraved. What kind of psychopath delights in such slaughter? Surely the being who Created the ENTIRE Universe has no need of pointless suffering. Surely the being who allegedly IS love would not delight in the pointless killing of his Creations - and yet the Old Gods do. The Old Gods delight in slaughter, delight in killing, delight in death and destruction. The bloodlust of the Old Gods is insatiable. It is despicable. It is wrong.

And all of humanity will be better off leaving Yahweh and all of the rest of Old Gods in the rubbish bin of history where they belong.

NOTE: Pictures are provided for illustration only as there are no ACTUAL pictures of Biblical sacrifices, only endless and graphic descriptions.

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Meaning Without God is an ongoing project to give voice to those who seek to experience this marvelous world not through the prism of bronze age fairy tales and ancient superstitions, but through the light of reason and the gift of understanding. To give comfort to those who question the value of their existence and who struggle to find meaning in the midst of life's chaos. To give purpose and hope to those who believe in the grace, nobility and beauty of the human spirit.